


Oh, Brother

by ChronicDelusionist



Series: X-OVER Unit [3]
Category: Mega Man (Cartoon 1994), Rockman Xover, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, Rockman | Mega Man Classic
Genre: Anxiety, Broken Families, Canon-typical Wily Plots, Christmas fic, Crossover, Depression, Gen, M/M, Multi, Post-Cartoon Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28318653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicDelusionist/pseuds/ChronicDelusionist
Summary: Proto Man and Mega Man have been rivals forever, and nothing is going to change that, especially after his betrayal during Deacon's election. That's fine by Proto, really. He enjoys life as a part of the bad guys. And if Mega seems slightly less fine with it, well, that's his problem.The Time Skimmer and a new adventure awaits. After several months of nothing, Quint and his timeline's Roll and Kalinka pick up on their erstwhile brother's signature. It's just, Quint has a problem, and it's not Blues' attempts to wedge his way into their life. But that's okay. It's not like anything could go wrong and make going to explore an unknown timeline any worse than it is, right?... Right?
Relationships: Established Blues | Proto Man/Shadow Man, Established Forte | Bass/Quint, Mega Man (Ruby Spears) & Proto Man (Ruby Spears), Quint & Proto Man (Ruby Spears), Roll & Blues | Proto Man
Series: X-OVER Unit [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1119738
Comments: 30
Kudos: 21





	1. A Holly Jolly Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a direct sequel to Future Vision, and I recommend that you go read the other two fics in this series first or a lot of the plot points are not going to make sense. That said, please enjoy! Merry Christmas!

It’s Christmastime, and Proto Man can’t help but feel in the spirit of things.

They’re thousands of feet in the air, the earth below an endless expanse of ice and snow. The arctic wind whips into and around him, fluttering his scarf madly as he stands on the back of Wily’s latest foray into madness and aims a red-and-white striped rocket launcher at his brother and his brother's dog-cum-rocket-sled.

“It’s so nice to spend time with family on the holidays,” he says with a grin, mostly to himself. As usual, his creator can’t help but ruin the moment.

“Take the shot already, you insipid waste of components!” Wily’s thick German accent roars from the front seat of the sleigh, where he’s bent double working frantically over a dashboard that could have come out of a Christmas special on TV; it’s all candy canes and gumdrop buttons, which is even more jarring when set next to Wily’s angular and contemporary technological ‘improvements’.

“Re- _lax,_ ” Proto all but purrs, lining up the blue bomber in his sights. “My  _ little brother _ won’t stand a chance against your ho-ho-homing missile.”

A shot of burning yellow plasma catches up with them and sails past Proto, where it collides with something and explodes. The sled takes a dip, and Proto staggers and shoots out a hand to grip the fabric of the huge gift bag next to him as he scrambles to keep on the sled and not lose his shot.

“I sure hope so,” Cutman wails, from where he’s gripping onto the railing of the sled behind Gutsman. “because we’re down a robo-reindeer!”

“I’ve gotta do everything around here,” Proto grouses, takes hasty aim, and fires.

As the confectionery-crafted missile slings itself at Mega Man, who has to do resort to evasive maneuvers to get out of the way, as Guts Man shouts a warning for another incoming bogey -  _ there’s  _ Roll, what took her so long - as Dr. Wily screams his rage at the heavens for another plan gone thoroughly sideways, Proto hangs on for dear life and tries not to laugh the whole way down to the ground.

This is his favourite game, and the best part is almost here.

\---

“This is low, even for _you!_ ”

Mega comes in swinging, and Proto rolls away from the punch with the easy grace of a cat. It collides with a chunk of ice, which cracks and shatters. His brother is  _ mad, _ his form sloppy. Proto is smirking from ear to ear.

This is it, the point of the whole thing. When everything else has gone awry, when Wily’s plans are in tatters, when the only thing left is a slugfest tête-à-tête.

“Hey, a guy can only put up with so much coal,” he says, taking a jab in return. It hits Mega solidly in the chest and his brother staggers back, still glaring daggers. “Have a heart, bro.”

“I  _ do, _ unlike _you,_ ” Mega says, and it’s maybe a little harsher than usual. It’s punctuated by another wild swing, which clips Proto on the arm and stings as his pain processors warn him that taking too many hits like that will compromise his combat integrity. “You tried to steal _Christmas!_ ”

“Hey, it’s a living,” Proto snickers. He lashes out with his boot and sweeps Mega off of his footing, and the blue robot tumbles into the snow.

Proto momentarily turns his attention to the other side of the battle, nearby. As predicted, Gutsman and Cutman are failing to ward off Roll, who’s wielding some kind of weaponized mini-freezer and using it with great prejudice. Wily is screaming beratement at them for being incompetent. With a spike of annoyance, Proto realizes that his time is going to be cut short.

_ Oh well, time to wrap this up, _ he thinks, and turns back to Mega. It’s right on the edge of his tongue, the usual:  _ come to the bad side, join Wily, slum it with me. It’s much more fun, I promise, if you’d just let go of the goody-two-shoes act - _

He’s interrupted by a sharp jerk from under him as Mega grabs his boot and _yanks_. Proto yelps as he falls down to the ice and the snow along with his brother, and as they begin to struggle on the frigid ground, vying for the dominant position in the brawl, he realizes with alarm that it’s  _ different  _ this time.

As Mega grabs the back of his head and shoves him face first into a snowdrift, getting powder wedged up behind his visor and blinding him, as robotkind’s superhero  _ growls _ and tears at him, punching and kneeing and kicking without abandon, Proto realizes quite abruptly that maybe, just maybe, Mega is more mad than he thought.

As he’s pinned to the ground and starts to hear the whine of a buster warning up, heat prickling at the sensors on his neck, Proto comes to the even more startling realization that Mega is more mad than he thought and  _ is going to kill him. _

“Wait,” he gasps.  _ This isn’t how this is supposed to go - _ “Bro-!”

“ _Stop calling me that!_ ” Mega says, and it’s sharp and loud because he’s not two feet away from Proto’s head and the whine from his buster is ringing in Proto’s ears and Proto spares a thought to be bewildered that this might be  _ it,  _ that he might  _ die _ here, because his brother went and got all uppity and broke the  _ rules - _

He hears something collide with Mega with a solid  _ clang _ that reverberates through to his frame, and Mega goes flying. 

“ _Mega!_ ” Roll’s voice calls, thick with alarm and worry and all of those other sickly saccharine emotions for good guys.

Disoriented, Proto flips around, to see Mega buried not too far away under the remains of Santa’s sled, or at least the remains of Wily’s modifications to it. The chassis underneath remains oddly untouched, despite the burning wreckage of the robo-reindeer they’d rigged to fly the thing.

“C’mon,” Gutsman says, running over as Roll does the same. She doesn’t even spare a thought for them, going straight to pull out her brother from where he’s trapped. “The doc says it’s time to get goin’.”

Proto staggers to his feet and lets his feet take him to Wily, who at some point had managed to get a Skullker out here for their journey away. He boards the craft and slumps down in one of the passenger seats.

As Wily gets revved up for a no-doubt hours-long rant about how useless his creations are, how they’ve failed him for the last time, etcetera, Proto looks out the window at the trail of smoke rising from the wreckage of the sleigh and stares until they turn fully away and it vanishes from his line of sight.

He’s silent the whole way back to the fortress.

\---

Wily corners him when they get back, as he always does.

“This was a _disaster,_ ” he says, except of course it sounds more like  _ zis vus a disasterr. _ Proto feels the urge to repeat it back to him with an even more exaggerated accent, but he’d learned better than to do  _ that _ very early on. It’s hard to do, on top of that. Dr. Wily is  _ all _ exaggeration. When he speaks, he’s all arm waving and dramatics and proclamations. Proto would say it comes with the territory of being a mad scientist, if Dr. Light weren’t so mild by comparison.

Usually it’s entertaining. Right now…

“Don’t sweat it, doc,” he says, leaning back against a machine, its function beyond looking impressive a mystery to him, and folding his arms. “We got what we went for, didn’t we?”

“No thanks to you, you nincompoop!” Wily turns around and raises his arms in the air, one clutching a floppy disk. “Your incompetence nearly cost us the data! It’s incomplete as it is! Our esteemed guest would have been  _ very displeased _ if we had -”

“ _Incomplete?_ ” A voice rumbles from the shadows and Wily jumps a clear foot in the air before whirling around. Proto barely controls himself from doing the same, and tenses up as this  _ feeling _ slithers down what would be his spine if he were human. A palpable dread that rubs his programming the wrong way.

Their esteemed guest steps out from the shadows, where, near as Proto can figure, it should have been impossible to sneak up on them, because he is  _ massive. _

“This will not delay the search,” the probably one thousand pounds of robot says, in a voice that says:  _ I am very displeased. _

“Of  _ course _ not,” Wily reassures the hulking figure, his voice adjusting its setting to from ‘dramatic’ to ‘wheedling’, which is pretty much Wily’s only other mode of speech in Proto’s experience. “In fact, the preparations are almost ready! We can begin at once!”

He pauses, and waggles a finger at the robot.

“But don’t forget our _deal,_ ” he says, voice jovial but with a definite undercurrent of threat. “We find what you’re looking for, and you take out Mega Man and that... _Dr. Light!_ ”

The figure that Proto has come to know as Blu D nods, slowly and solemnly. That feeling that pours off of him in waves intensifies. He  _ feels _ dangerous, somehow. And if the thrashing that he’d given all of Wily’s robot masters on arrival had been any indication, he might even be up to the task.

_ Nothing my bro couldn’t handle, _ Proto thinks, but nonetheless, his lips curl downwards into a frown.

“Open the rift,” the robot from afar commands, and Dr. Wily and Proto exchange a glance before hopping to it.

\---

Quint wakes up with a start, eyes flying open in the darkness.

He’s shaking, and it takes him a moment to let the dark tendrils of the dream he’d been wrapped up in fall away. As his systems register that he’s conscious, he lets out a soft moan, lifts up an arm to cover his eyes, and tries to convince his brain to let go of a myriad of responses related to combat mode.

_ There’s nothing there. I’m in bed. It was just a dream, _ he thinks, willing himself to believe it. Slowly but surely, his coolant pump slows, his reactions come off of hair trigger, and he curls up onto his side, letting the arm that had once blocked his sight of the room dangle onto the empty space where Bass (Or Treble, depending on the wolf’s mood) would usually be.

_ Dreams suck, _ he thinks ruefully and not for the first time, and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t go back to sleep. Just exists, letting the afterimages of the dream wash over him in little waves, ebbing with each pass until all that’s left is a calm background sea of… something not great, a sort of resigned anxiousness, but also not raw fear.

He doesn’t want to get up. Lying here is easier.

He gets up.

On the way to the kitchen, he’s greeted by the sight of the Time Skimmer looming in the middle of the central laboratory down the hall. He catches himself staring and shakes his head, continuing on his way with a quickened pace.

\---

“You miss Bass, huh?” Roll asks, cutting her toast diagonally with a fork and knife. Quint eyes her progress with his own slice in both hands, pulling it away from his mouth to make room for a pout.

“He’s only been gone for three days,” he says, or rather, whines. “I’m not, like, _dying._ ”

“You look like hell,” Kalinka says, poking at an orange that Quint thinks Roll must have snuck onto her plate. It gets chilly in the warehouse in winter, and she’s dressed appropriately both for that and for the holidays, sporting a loud red Christmas sweater that surely must have been given to her by Roll.

“Thanks,” he says reproachfully, taking a bite of toast. After swallowing, he sighs and slumps forward. “... Just had a bad dream, s’all.”

He feels a hand on his shoulder, and when he looks up, Kalinka is giving him a sympathetic expression. She lingers a moment, squeezes, and returns her (notably less sympathetic) attention to the orange.

“Well, they’ll be back in no time at all,” Roll says, in the bright and cheery and profoundly annoying way of morning people everywhere. She directs her attention at Kalinka, who narrows her eyes like a vampire at the first hint of dawn. “You said before New Year’s, right?”

“Yeah,” Kalinka says, visibly giving up and picking up the offending fruit to peel it. She digs into the skin with her thumbnail and starts pulling patches off. “Hard to say exactly when. We’ve been wrestling with time distortion on both sides, but I’m going to try and open it up in a few days.”

“I hope it’s not super short on their side,” Quint muses, through another bite of toast. “Bass was really excited about seeing Zero again.” he pauses. “... And the others were really excited about seeing the combat sims again.”

“Saku!” Sakugarne says from below his elbow, ever the faithful pogo stick, and he absently reaches out a free hand to pat its handlebars.

“I’m worried about how this… delay thing is going to affect looking for Jazz,” Roll says, and Quint’s hand freezes mid-pat, fortunately out of her line of sight.

“I’m more worried about the fact that we’ve been scanning for months and haven’t found a damn thing,” Kalinka says, popping an orange slice into her mouth.

“Yes,” Roll says, “but from what you said, we could be stranded for… what, a week each time on each trip before you can open the portal again safely? Minimum?”

“It _varies,_ ” Kalinka says, biting down and grimacing. She chews for a moment and swallows before continuing. “That’s the thing, this is still more of an art than a science. But again, it doesn’t matter because that’s a bridge we can’t cross yet.”

She looks frustrated, Quint thinks. They both do, and they do every time they have this conversation. He tries not to slouch too much as he finishes his toast.

“ _Anyway,_ ” Roll says, and claps her hands together as though she wasn’t the one who started it, “it’s Christmas Eve! And the others aren’t here, but we can all come together and have a nice holiday.”

“I was going to get some work done,” Kalinka sighs, taking a draught of coffee.

“I was gonna watch cartoons,” Quint says, with a significantly more appropriate amount of shame. Sakugarne chips in a little hop of approval.

“ _All day?_ ” Roll raises an eyebrow. He squirms.

“All the Christmas specials are on,” he says, with a defensive edge. “And Bass doesn’t like  _ Nocus Pocus, _ so I was gonna marathon it.”

“I remember that one,” Kalinka muses. “Isn’t that the one where the girl gets accidentally transferred to a magic school and has to pretend to fit in?”

“Yeah,” Quint brightens up. “Bass says it’s dumb because they shoulda figured it out after like, three episodes max.”

“Well, I hope you’re up for things tomorrow,” Roll says, standing with her empty plate and starting towards the sink, “because this is our first Christmas with you back and I want to spend  _ time _ with -”

“ _Merry Christmas!_ ” a fourth voice injects itself into the conversation as the kitchen door sweeps open and Blues steps in like he owns the place.

He’s in casual wear - grey slacks and red-and-white Christmas sweater which his scarf is loosely tossed over - and he’s carrying an armful of gifts. An ear-to-ear grin falters as, in one smooth motion, everyone in the room draws weapons on him.

“So much for Christmas cheer,” he says, looking down the barrel of Kalinka’s pistol and managing to look only mildly disappointed instead of intimidated. Quint steps off of Sakugarne, and Roll’s sabre withdraws back into her buster arm. She flashes back out of armour, stomps over, and reaches up to yank him down to her level by the ear.

“ _Yowch -_ Roll!” he gasps, and one of the presents go tumbling from his arms.

“ _How did you get in here?_ ” she hisses.

Shadow Man, sans armour and plus one matching gaudy sweater in navy and grey, glides in through the doorway and takes up a spot in the corner, waving casually and acting for all the world like he belongs there and like his boyfriend isn’t in danger of imminent death by Roll’s wrath. Quint tenses up and puts his hand back on Sakugarne, who lets out a worried little “Saku?”, and Kalinka very deliberately lowers her gun and holsters it.

“ _Shit,_ ” she says, massaging her temples. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“You almost  _ shot _ me!” Blues complains, and Roll yanks again. “ _Ow,_ okay, point taken.”

“You have a  _ lot of nerve _ dropping in after not saying a word to us for _months!_ ” she says, face a mask of outrage.

“ _And I’ll be in the lab,_ ” Kalinka says, standing up suddenly, leaving her meal partially uneaten and her chair pulled out as she beats feet for the door. Roll shoots her a look which is pointedly ignored, but her attention goes back to Blues as he shifts to maintain balance in his very, very awkward position.

“I was recovering,” Blues says, arms twitching as though he’d like to use them to accentuate his helplessness but they’re stuck holding onto the presents. “Look, I got my core fixed. It was delicate and it took a while to stabilize - but I’m here now!”

“And while you were recovering, you couldn’t work a phone?” Roll scoffs.

“I, uh,” Blues grins nervously. “I didn’t have your number?”

“Shadow Man has my number.” She narrows her eyes.

“I do,” the ninja in question says, from his corner, where he’s watching with an expression like the cat that got the cream. Quint catches his eye and he smiles unnervingly. Quint represses a shudder and looks back at the drama in progress.

“And we’ve been texting,” Roll adds.

“You’ve been _what?_ ” Blues shoots Shadow Man an  _ et tu, Brutus _ kind of look and gets a very much affected shrug in return.

“My web of contacts is vast,” he says.

“He has a lot of adorable pictures of frogs,” Roll says.

“We’ve maintained a business relationship,” Shadow Man says, with a tiny downwards twitch of his lips.

“So if you think that you can just waltz in here and act like family coming for the holidays, _mister -_ ” Roll starts.

“I - um, I think it’s nice to see you again, Blues,” Quint ventures. Roll rounds to fix a look on him and he sinks back into his chair. She lets go of Blues’ ear, though, and he springs back to unbent posture with only a wince.

“C’mon, Quint wants me here.” Blues pounces on the opportunity. “Just let me unload these, hang around for a few hours, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase _too little, too late?_ ” Roll crosses her arms.

Quint feels an intense desire to go back to his room and lay in bed for the rest of the day. He rubs the bridge of his nose and grimaces.

“Look -” Blues starts, but he’s interrupted by footfalls in the hall, and everyone turns to look as Kalinka pops into the doorframe, out of breath.

“We’ve  _ got _ something,” she says, and just like that, everything else falls to the wayside as they collectively make for the lab.

\---

“Yessss,” Wily says, rubbing his hands together gleefully as his invention whirs to life and a rip in space and time tears open between two diode-looking contraptions. “Behold my _genius!_ ”

“Yup, looks like a portal to me,” Proto remarks, earning a glare from his creator.

“You have achieved much with your primitive technology,” Blu D says, standing like a statue not too far away.

“You could learn some manners from our guest, Proto Man,” Wily snaps, going to a console and beginning to type in some commands.

In truth, the portal is dazzling, a whirl of colour and light that moves in a sluggish whirlpool and disappears into a point that defies comprehension, a black-that-isn’t black in the middle. It’s a lot like the time portal that Vile had stepped out of - and into - once upon a time.

Proto side-eyes Blu D, who remains stoic, and frowns.

“For you see, this is _no mere portal,_ ” Wily says, spinning around as a bunch of equations and charts pop up on the large monitor behind him.

“It’s an interdimensional rift,” Proto says.

“It’s an interdimensiona- will you _cease your nattering,_ ” Wily grouses, throwing a wrench at Proto. It  _ tinks _ off of his helmet and falls to the ground. Proto doesn’t move from where he’s leaned up against a databank. He turns to Blu D. “But of course, you knew that. What my brilliance has achieved that your so-called Dimensions have not -”

Proto feels another wave of that  _ presence _ coming off of Blu D and tenses up, but Wily is completely oblivious to the change in atmosphere.

“- is a way to track down this  _ R-Shadow _ you so desperately desire.”

“The retrieval of R-Shadow is essential to our operations,” Blu D says, in a way that manages to sound bored and threatening at once.

“Yes, so you say,” Wily says, inserting the floppy from earlier into the computer. “Which is why we’ve acquired a flawless tracking program from our friend up North.”

“I gotta say, stealing Santa’s list might  _ actually _ be the craziest thing you’ve ever done,” Proto smirks.

Wily opens his mouth to continue the back-and-forth, but Blu D cuts in.

“Bring him here,” he says, in a voice that brooks no argument.

“Yes, yes, in good time,” Wily says, waving him off. Proto feels a palpation of dread again and wonders if Wily really can’t sense it, because he seems unaffected. Wily types in ‘R-Shadow’, presses the enter key with a characteristic flourish, and…

\---

“You  _ found _ something?” Roll is the first one on the scene, having kept pace with Kalinka. Kalinka slumps into her computer chair, breathing heavily.

“ _Wow,_ I’m out of shape,” she says, in between breaths, and then pulls herself in to the main monitor. It’s already live and running, several holo-displays courtesy of their continued correspondence with 21XX running at the sides displaying more data. “And  _ yes, _ we’ve got something. Our scans are picking up a dimensional disturbance. It’s faint, but…”

As Quint pulls to a stop behind her and rests a hand on the back of her chair, he notices the Time Skimmer humming where it towers next to them. His grip tightens on the cushioning.

“What’s going on?” Blues says, looking up at the machine and attached catwalk that makes up the core of the lab.

“We’ve been looking for Jazz,” Roll explains, impatiently, as Kalinka starts banging at the keyboard and running through all sorts of programs that Quint doesn’t understand. “He disappeared after the fight with him, and he took the version of the Time Skimmer from our time with him.”

“You want to bring R-Shadow _back here?_ ” Blues’ eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, and Roll sends him an absolutely scathing look. “After he led an attack on the city?”

“He’s our _brother,_ ” she says, and Quint almost misses it, but something flashes across Blues’ face before his mouth flattens into a line. Before he can say anything else, Kalinka cuts in.

“Of course this would happen when the others aren’t here,” she says, massaging her temples. “Roll, I’ve locked down the source of the signal. I can send you guys there, or at least  _ close _ to there, but…”

“Just the two of us?” Quint asks, trying not to sound too nervous. Sakugarne hops at his side and lets out a little ‘saku!’ as if to say,  _ the three of us, _ but it doesn’t help much. Quint pats its handle anyway.

“We can handle it,” Roll says, pulling her hands up to her hips.

“At that point, I’m more concerned about who’s going to defend the home base,” Kalinka says, spinning around to face all of them. 

“I can see why,” Shadow Man says, stroking his chin and eyeing all of the obvious future technology appraisingly.

“From your point of view, you might be stuck there anywhere from a few days to weeks before the connection is stable enough to open again.” Kalinka says. “From our side? A week, minimum. And a few days before the others get back from visiting Zero where we have no security if Wily decides to finally pay us a visit.”

“I’ll go with them,” Blues says out of nowhere, and everyone turns to look at him. “And Shadow Man can watch the lab.”

“You’ll what?” Roll asks, taken aback.

“I’ll what?” Shadow Man asks, much more flatly.

“Hear me out,” Blues says, putting his hands up.

“No,” Roll says, peevish.

“Wait,” Quint says. “Can’t we? At least hear what he has to say?”

“I’m listening,” Kalinka says, leaning back and steepling her fingers. Roll, who had been about to protest again, crosses her arms and looks to Blues expectantly.

“I’m self-sufficient,” he says, starting to count off on his fingers. “I can do repairs in the field, I’m used to stealth missions, I’m good at bypassing security, and my core isn’t about to give out at any moment anymore. Aaaand my boyfriend loves me and I would owe him one?”

The last one is directed at Shadow Man, who quirks up an eyebrow in a perfect arch. A silent, pleading conversation unfolds, and after a brief struggle, Blues emerges the victor as Shadow Man sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“... I do have intimate knowledge of Wily’s operations,” he says. “I can keep an ear to the ground and… lend some of my assets.”

“ _Yes,_ ” Blues grins. “Thanks, babe.”

Shadow Man regards Blues with a look that looks halfway between being fond and wanting to kill him, and not for the first time, Quint feels like he doesn’t understand their relationship.

Roll, meanwhile, looks torn.

“... He’s right, you know,” Kalinka says, more gently than usual. “He’d be an asset.”

“I know,” Roll says, brows pinched.

“It’s your call,” Kalinka says.

“I _know,_ ” Roll says, and then, all at once, the accumulated hot air of her anger evaporates, and her posture droops. “... Fine.”

Quint moves to put a hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at him gratefully. Blues hovers on the edge of their bubble, the three of them, and looks like he wants to say something, but doesn’t.

“But I’m in charge,” Roll says, standing back up straight as a ramrod. In a flash, she’s in armour, and, resigned, Quint follows her lead.

“Roger that,” Blues says, a smile forming at the edges of his mouth as he, too, dons armour.

Kalinka gets up and bustles to a nearby worktable, reaches under, and pulls out a duffel bag. She shoves it into Blues’ hands unceremoniously.

“E-Tanks, a backup comm, parts, and odds and ends,” she says, getting back to her chair and opening up some more programs. The Time Skimmer fires to life, and Quint pushes down a surge of dread as he looks up to see the space above it, where the distortion lies, start to churn and resolve into a portal to the unknown.

“I need to make some calls,” Shadow Man says, in a way that sounds almost grumpy, and then he sighs and pulls Blues in close and lays a peck on his cheek. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Or you’ll kill me?” Blues shoots back with a smirk, and Shadow Man rolls his eyes.

“I’ll collect my debts one way or another,” he says. “You  _ do _ owe me for this.”

“If you two are done canoodling,” Kalinka says, “I can’t keep this thing open forever, so _chop chop._ ”

As Shadow Man retreats to a solitary corner, Quint, Roll, and Blues climb the catwalks and find themselves face to face with the portal.

“So how does this work?” Blues asks. “We just walk right through?”

“Well, of course,” Roll says, tapping her foot. “After you.”

“In case there’s an ambush on the other side?” Blues says, with a smirk.

“Yes,” she replies, without missing a beat, and his smirk drops.

“Guys,” Quint says from where he stands behind the two of them, voice as strained as he feels. Roll looks back at him and purses her lips, looking a little - appropriately - ashamed.

“Okay,” she says. “All together, then.”

The two of them step forward into the portal.

Quint hesitates.

\---

Wily presses the enter button, and the computer makes a little negative chirp as the screen comes up with a message that says ‘NO RESULTS FOUND’.

“What,” Wily says, at a loss, and Proto Man side-eyes Blu D. For the first time since the conversation started, the behemoth moves, taking a step forward.

“Your technology has failed,” he says, in a voice chillingly familiar to the right hands of evil overlords everywhere. Proto launches into damage control mode.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he says, shooting forward from where he’d been reclining. “Let’s not get hasty.”

“It should have worked,” Wily growls, kicking the computer’s base as though that would help. “The list should contain every name in existence! I tuned it specifically to the last known coordinates  _ you _ provided!”

“Are you saying there is a flaw in my data?” Blu D asks, and Proto fights back a chill.

“Relax,” Proto says, getting between them. “Is there  _ anything _ else you can give us? Aliases? Nicknames? Shoot, maiden name?”

To his surprise, and immense relief, the feeling of dread recedes, and Blu D steps back.

“I heard that he was originally crafted by an Earth scientist before joining our ranks,” he says, thoughtfully. “You may find him under the designation ‘Light’.”

“ _O-kay,_ ” Proto says, wheeling around to see Wily’s expression of perfect outrage and shooting the scientist a  _ look.  _ “Let’s give it a shot.”

Wily visibly grinds his teeth together and whips around, inputting the letters a little more forcefully than necessary.

A familiar list of names pop up. The names Rock, Roll and Blues Light pop out of the list at Proto (Roll twice, for some reason), and he frowns.

“Here we are,” Wily says. “I hope your  _ precious R-Shadow _ isn’t another Mega Man. I have more than enough to deal with with one blue pest!”

Blu D shakes his head.

“I am told that he was not.”

“Have you even met this guy?” Proto asks, and Blu D doesn’t answer.

_ I’ll take that as a no, _ he thinks, frowning.

“Well then, the odd one out…” Wily wiggles his fingers and points at a name. “I’ve never heard of a Light-bot with this name.”

\---

Quint is hesitating. The portal is whirling in front of him, and all of a sudden…

The dark tendrils of the dream that had left him when he woke come crashing back.

He’s paralyzed.

“Quint?” Kalinka calls up to him, and the spell is broken. He blinks, shaking it off, and looks down to see her standing, cupping her hands in front of her mouth to amplify her voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m,” he calls back. “I’m fine! Sorry, I just…”

He trails off.

_ I can do this, _ he thinks.  _ They need me to do this. _

“You just…?” Kalinka replies, and then there’s a beeping noise from her monitor. “ _Shit._ The portal is going to close! You need to hurry!”

\---

“Then bring him here,” Blu D says, impatient, and Wily grins.

“With pleasure,” he says, flipping a switch.

The portal sparks and changes hue.

\---

“Right!” Quint says, and turns to the portal. It’s sparking at the edges, and he squeezes his eyes shut and forces one foot after another. At his side, Sakugarne hops along with him.

The last thing he hears before the now-familiar sense of displacement that accompanies portal-walking is Kalinka’s voice.

“Wait, what’s -”

And then he’s pulled along, along, along, his mind vaguely aware of a sensation like but unlike teleporting, before he stumbles out the other end.

He opens his eyes to a dark lab and three figures, two of which are familiar and one of which is  _ Dr. Wily.  _ He freezes, as every part of his mind screams that  _ this cannot be happening _ at once.

It’s the third figure - the huge blue knightlike one he doesn’t recognize - that steps forward. He takes three massive strides, coming to rest in front of Quint. Quint forms his buster without even thinking, one hand on Sakugarne, but the robot gets to one knee and bows.

“Commander R-Shadow,” The robot rumbles. “We’ve found you at last.”

There’s a long, drawn-out silence.

Quint lets his buster drop to his side.

“... Yes,” he says, weakly. “That’s me.”

He grips Sakugarne’s handle very, very tightly.

“R-Shadow.”


	2. I Wonder as I Wander

The portal closes behind Roll and Blues with a waver, a shimmering wave of distortion passing over it surface before it ultimately winks out of existence, leaving no trace of its presence in the stale air of the alleyway they’d landed in. Sparsely, fat snowflakes drift down from a grey sky above, and the otherworldly thrum fades out, and the sounds from outside filter in, cars and crowds and the familiar hustling and bustling of a metropolis.

Roll is gripping the strap of the duffel bag very, very tightly.

“... Maybe he got held up on the other end?” Blues offers, and to his credit, despite the visor blocking his eyes, his voice is obviously strained with worry.

The fact that any alternative is unthinkably worse hangs unspoken between them.

Roll flashes out of her armor and into her civilian clothes and slumps against a brick wall, cupping her face in her hands and softly moaning.

“This is _just perfect,_ ” she hisses into her palms. Then there’s a hand on her shoulder and she jerks away, looking up to see a frowning Blues with his hand pulling back as though burned.

“Look,” he says, flashing into his own civilian-wear as he does without missing a beat. “We have - what, a week here, Kalinka said? We’ll just wait it out and go back and tell her what happened. No sweat. Like I said, he probably just… got distracted or something.”

“You want me to skip out on the first lead we’ve had on Jazz in months?” Roll says, levelling him with a sharp glare, and Blues puts up his hands defensively.

“That’s not what I said!”

“Really? Because that’s what it sounded like,” Roll says, and then sighs pointedly and lets the duffel bag rest on the ground, stooping down to rummage through it. She procures the items she was looking for swiftly, and slips on a long brown coat and a grey-blue scarf against the chill in the air.

Blues is still in the Christmas sweater and his own ever-present neckwear, and she finds it in her to be annoyed that he doesn’t need to change.

He looks like he’s holding his tongue for once, thumbs hooked in his pockets.

 _Good,_ she thinks.

“... We’re not going to have contact with Kalinka for probably days,” Roll says, pulling out a small radio from the assorted equipment. “We didn’t know everything, but the plan was… She’s going to ping us on the long-range comms when the portal reopens, and from there she said she thinks she’ll be able to measure the time dilation and give us an idea of when the next window will be, before it closes.”

“That’s… inexact,” Blues says, casually leaning a shoulder against the same brick wall that Roll had surrendered herself to a few moments ago. He makes it looks stylish.

“She’s been working on it with the team from 21XX, but -”

“- I’m sorry, _21XX?_ ” Blues’ eyebrows shoot up. Roll regards him with another flat stare as she replaces the radio and zips the duffel back up.

“You kind of missed a whole lot,” she says, straightening and adjusting the strap on her shoulder. “You know, in case I didn’t make that clear enough.”

“Wait, did you tell Shadow Man about this?” Blues straightens too.

“Of course I did,” she says. “And if I hadn’t, I’m sure Enker did.”

“We need to have a talk about communication when I get back,” he grouses.

“Do you even know what irony means?” Roll asks, completely deadpan.

“Okay,” he says, with an exaggerated wince. “I deserve that.”

“ _Mhm,_ ” Roll says, and then sighs, and starts toward the mouth of the alleyway. “Come on. Let’s figure out where we are.”

They step out into the cityscape, and it’s both familiar and jarringly un-familiar. There are the high-speed trains and skyscrapers and concrete structures that Roll is used to, but it’s like everything is just a step to the right from where it should be. The vehicles that chug by on the road are all in dated styles, everything is a little boxier, a little grungier, and a little less bright than she’s used to. There are robots here and there, but they’re all taken by that unfamiliar aesthetic. Roll is used to robots being cute, to appeal to humans, but she watches as two police-bots go by on what looks like their beat, with boxy legs and arms and a stern set to them. The humans are dressed oddly, too, and it takes her a moment to place the style.

“New York.” Blues’ voice comes from somewhere off to her side, which snaps her out of a daze. She looks over to find him holding up the front page of a newspaper. It’s crinkled. “December eighteenth, 199X.”

“Where did you get that?” Roll asks, and he shrugs.

“Blew into my face,” he says, smoothing the paper to take a closer look at the articles.

“That’s… convenient,” she says, and he nods absently.

“No argument there. Let’s see…” he says. “Deacon’s policies make big splash in the Big Apple… Robotics industry continues to boom, crime rises with it… oh and - _what_.”

He holds out the page for Roll to see. The center story catches her eye immediately.

“‘Mega Man saves Christmas’,” she quotes the headline, and then stares at a picture of a familiar and yet unfamiliar robot, and looks up at Blues. Blues’ mouth is a straight, unreadable line.

“Keep reading,” he says. She takes the paper from him and reads the contents of the article aloud.

“‘All-American hero Mega Man saved the holiday season for everyone today, but especially the children of the Hopeful Hearts Orphanage, after an unsettling scheme by infamous mad scientist Dr. Wily and -” Roll blinks, “- _Proto Man_ to target the man in red himself was foiled by Dr. Light’s greatest.”

She looks up at Blues. Blues could be looking anywhere, technically, but she’s pretty sure he’s meeting her eyes.

“... You’re still a bad guy here?” she says, handing the newspaper back. To her chagrin, he simply tosses it aside and it blows away on an errant gust of wind.

“Can we put a pin in that for a second?” Blues says. “ _All-American hero_ Mega Man?”

“Okay,” Roll grants, faintly. “That is weird. And there are so many robots, but this whole place is...” she pauses and looks around, searching for a word to sum it up, “... dated? Father didn’t start making robots commercially until 20XX.”

“And I’m not even touching -” Blues pauses as a ruckus starts up down the street, and they both turn to look.

The newspaper that had been blowing in the wind has found another target in one of the police robots that Roll had spotted earlier. As they watch, it sticks to the robot’s face, and a struggle ensues where its partner tries to help it and only ends up taking off its head. Roll flinches as the headless robot body veers close to a group of middle schoolers, one of which drops a nearly-finished banana in its path. It slips on the peel and slides its way, miraculously, into a waiting dumpster. 

After a stunned silence, the kids laugh and go on their way.

Roll and Blues exchange a look.

“Well that was really d-…” Blues starts, and then frowns.

“Freaky?” Roll says.

“No, what was,” he tries again, and then stops. “Oh, what the…”

Roll frowns at him and quirks an eyebrow.

“What the - okay, seriously, what in the -” he says, shoulders hunching. “ _What is happening right now._ ”

“You tell me!” Roll says, looking around for any sign of a missed threat. In the background, the police bots dance about re-attaching the head to the fallen one’s body.

“I can’t _swear!_ ” Blues says, and Roll gasps and sharply pokes him in the side. “- OW!”

“ _Seriously?_ ” she says, putting her hands on her hips as Blues rubs the poked area and looks down at her crossly.

“Excuse me for being concerned that something is messing with my programming,” he says, looking around as though he could catch whatever it is at it. His left hand twitches, and Roll hopes fervently that his paranoia doesn’t trump their need to keep a low profile.

“You’re being ridiculous,” she says, and then sighs. “And, on the subject of crude words, a right…”

She stops.

“A right…” she says. The word she’s looking for is there when she thinks it, but gone as soon as she goes to say it.

Blues smirks in amusement at her plight, and so she pokes him again. Hard.

“Ow!” he slides backwards, holding up his hands. “Stop that!”

“Okay, fine!” she says, crossing her arms. “But this is getting _weird._ ”

Blues sighs, running a hand through his hair. It’s slowly collecting snowflakes, the snowfall starting to thicken around them.

“You’re right about that,” he says. A few moments of silence rest between them before he adds: “Well. What now?”

Roll blinks at his expectant look, and belatedly remembers that she is, in fact, in charge.

“We…” she starts, and then takes a breath. “Well, we have _one_ place to go where we might get answers.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Blues grimaces. “Any way I can convince you to start _anywhere_ besides -”

\---

“- Dr. Light’s Lab,” Roll says, looking up from the map at their destination. Blues is fidgeting behind her.

The building is a far cry from the place she once knew as home. It’s not so far out in the countryside, for one, sitting only barely out of the suburbs of New York on a small pocket of land. It looks mostly like a regular house, except that it doesn’t at all, because attached to a building that looks architecturally plain is a sort of sharp metal dome with oblong oval windows and a single closed iris exit dotting it. The place is also littered with antennas and various other pieces of small machinery. It’s also, at the moment, covered with festive Christmas lights. The overall effect is… disjointed.

“Hm,” Roll says, eyeing a set of reindeer-shaped decorations on the front yard. “... Tacky.”

“Tacky enough to leave?” Blues says, somewhere between sardonic and hopeful. She rolls her eyes and grabs him by the elbow, dragging him up the front steps.

“Stop being so _obstinate,_ ” she scolds. “You’re the one who wanted to visit family for Christmas.”

“Yeah, this is _not_ what I had in mind,” he says, pulling away just enough to offer token resistance to his fate. Roll tugs him along without paying it much mind and rings the doorbell.

“Well it’s not what _I_ had in mind, either,” she says. Somewhere from inside the house, a dog starts barking. “I can tell you that.”

Blues sags, leans against the side of the alcove in front of the door, and sighs.

“Look -” he says, frowning, but he’s cut off as the door opens to reveal a smiling, fully armored Mega Man, Rush at his heels.

There’s a moment where all three of them look at each other. He looks _different_ from her brother, and that’s all that Roll really manages to register before the new Blue Bomber catches sight of Blues. His eyes widen, something in his previously open expression _shutters_ into rage, and there’s a flurry of motion as he draws his buster and Blues jumps to attention.

“ _Proto Man,_ ” he growls, and Roll hears the telltale whine of a buster about to fire.

\---

“Commander R-Shadow,” the huge, armored robot in front of Quint intones. He’s still kneeling into a bow, head respectfully inclined. “You have been retrieved at last.”

“... Yup,” Quint says. “That’s me. R-Shadow.”

He’s hit by a minor bout of Deja Vu, and frowns.

_Didn’t we say that already?_

He doesn’t have time to consider that further, because the robot stands up, and looks to be about to say something more, but Dr. Wily cuts in, rubbing his hands together.

“What a touching reunion!” he says, and _wow,_ his accent is thicker than Quint remembers. His voice is coated with obviously false sentiment. He strides right up to the big robot and ignores a look that even without the benefit of the robot’s face reads to Quint as annoyance. “Perhaps he can even help us fulfill your side of the bargain and exterminate that _pesky_ Mega Man.”

“I dunno about that,” Quint says, on reflex. All eyes turn to him. “Uh, I mean…”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, doc,” Blues - no, not quite Blues, he looks markedly different now that Quint is getting a good look at him - says, pulling himself up from a casual slouch. “We just got our bolts kicked in. Rushing in without a plan would just be handing my _brother_ another round.”

Not-quite-Blues drips smarminess with every word. He looks to be built around the same age as Quint currently appears to be, in his late teens, but his musculature is oddly emphasized, and he wears his scarf loosely around the shoulders as opposed to the Blues that Quint knows, who secures it by tying it off around his neck while in battle gear.

“We do not require a plan,” says the big robot. “I will crush this Mega Man and we will depart back to our homeworld.”

“Uh,” Quint says, feeling a spike of panic.

“Hey, Mega Man is _my_ brother.” The not-Blues’ smarm switches to hostility in an instant, his body language coiling from relaxed to tense in record time. “ _I_ get to scrap him!”

“ _Uhhhh,_ ” Quint says, but they’re engaged in a staredown.

“The price of failure, Proto Man,” Wily sneers at not-Blues (Proto Man?). “Let our visitor go and finish off that _blue dweeb_ alone if you want to sit here licking your wounds!”

“Why take the risk when we could find an angle, get them at their weakest -” Proto Man starts, only to be interrupted by the big robot.

“This world’s technology is far inferior to ours,” he says, and something about the way he says it sends a chill running up Quint’s frame. “Your Mega Man will fall.”

Proto Man looks about ready to put that inferiority claim to the test, with busters, and Quint finally finds his voice again.

“Wait,” he says. “Blues is right. We shouldn’t, um... rush into it.”

Once again, all eyes are on him, and he mentally squirms in anguish as Sakugarne hops up and punctuates his statement with a supportive little ‘Saku!’

Proto Man in particular is giving him a weird look, and he realizes belatedly that he just used the wrong name.

“I’m a commander and stuff,” Quint says, hastily. “And that just sounds like a bad idea? I mean, they’re inferior. For sure. But, uh, maybe they have like, uh…”

“A secret weapon up their sleeve?” Proto Man cuts in, smoothly. He turns back to Wily. “You know Dr. Light.”

“That accursed Light _does_ always interfere…” Wily mutters, stroking his chin. He turns around and walks over to a console, forcefully inputting some command or another. “Bah! With his acclaim! And his _funding!_ Meanwhile, I, the _real_ genius, work away in obscurity! Toiling for scraps!”

Wily gestures broadly at the fully equipped, perfectly serviceable lab around him, and Proto Man nods sympathetically.

The big armored robot looks less taken by Wily’s plight, and looks to Quint.

“This is your command?” he asks, tone flat.

“Yyyyyes,” Quint says, glad that he is wearing an opaque visor and probably doesn’t look as unnerved as he feels.

“Very well,” he says and, with eerie quietness for a robot of his size, he withdraws. In the dimly lit, spacious lab, Quint loses sight of him more quickly than he’d like.

Proto Man and Wily are still talking.

“- And we’ll _get_ Dr. Light,” Proto Man says, with a tone of voice that screams put-on reassurance. “I’ll send out the Batontons to scout, and we’ll get a plan together.”

“Yes, _fine,_ ” Wily says, crossing his arms and glancing up at Quint with obvious disdain. Quint tries not to freeze up. He turns back to Proto Man and his voice goes very, very low and threatening. “But if you fail me again…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Proto Man scoffs. “You’ll disassemble me. Got it.”

Wily narrows his eyes, and there’s a _moment_ where Quint thinks something will happen, but it passes.

Instead, Proto Man turns around and saunters over to Quint, slinging an arm around his shoulder. A very firm arm, with a very firm grip.

“Now if you’ll excuse us,” Proto Man says, smirking in a way that is at once very familiar and chillingly un-familiar, “ _R-Shadow_ and I are gonna talk strategy.”

Quint gulps as Proto steers him out of the room, Sakugarne bouncing along at their heels.

\---

“You’re not R-Shadow,” Proto Man says.

“I’m R-Shadow!” Quint tries. The red robot crosses his arms. “What makes you think I’m not?”

Proto Man gestures to Sakugarne, who is bouncing around in the bounds of the supply closet Quint had been dragged into, investigating its little pogo stick heart out.

“Saku?” it asks, looking up at Proto Man with its guileless googly eyes.

“Bad guys don’t have cute sidekicks,” he says, smirking.

“A bad guy _made_ my cute sidekick,” Quint says, pouting.

“You’re also a worse liar than my brother,” he adds.

“Nuh-uh,” Quint says.

“And about as sharp.” Proto Man says, and Quint bristles.

“ _Hey,_ ” Quint says. “I -”

“Where’d you hear the name ‘Blues’?” Proto Man interrupts, his tone suddenly far more serious.

“Blues?” Quint blinks, jarred by the shift. “He’s - he’s my brother.”

“You don’t say,” Proto Man says, suddenly unreadable.

Quint recalls this new Proto Man having some very specific goals in mind towards his own brother and thinks, _oops._

“Wait, no, I mean…” he flounders.

“So if you’re not R-Shadow, who are you, _Quint?_ ”

Quint’s eyes widen behind his visor.

“Wait, how do you know my name?” Quint asks, in half a hiss.

“Saku!” Sakugarne backs him up, hopping to his side.

“Trade secret,” Proto Man says. “So I’m right, then.”

“I’m - _argh!_ ” Quint pulls up his hands and cups them to hold his face. “ _Fine._ No, I’m not R-Shadow. _Please_ don’t blow my cover. I just want to go home.”

“Blow your cover?” Proto laughs to himself, a soft snicker. “Far from it. I think this could be _mutually beneficial_.”

“I’m not helping you fight Mega Man,” Quint says, into his hands.

“Fine by me,” Proto Man says, a grin in his voice. “What _I_ want is for that overgrown suit of armor to be out of my fortress and away from my _little brother_.”

Quint peers up at Proto Man through an opening in his fingers, frowning. He looks… genuinely agitated, in a weird, guarded way. The crook of his smile is just a little too sharp.

“I thought you wanted to… scrap him,” he says.

“I do,” Proto Man says, leaning against a shelf nonchalantly. “Emphasis on _me._ Mega Man is _my_ brother, and _I’ll_ take care of him.”

Quint stares.

Proto Man stares back.

“... What?” Proto Man asks.

“Do you, uh…” Quint frowns. “Do you know any robots named Bass?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Oh,” Quint says. “... That’s. Probably for the best.”

“... Yeah, okay,” Proto Man says. He looks almost thrown off by the aside. “So are you in, or what?”

“I don’t really… have much of a choice?” Quint says, and then sighs. “I dunno how long I can keep up pretending to be R-Shadow, though. I barely know anything about him.”

Proto Man disengages from leaning and strides the two steps to Quint to put his arm around his shoulders in that overly-familiar way again. Quint grimaces.

“Lucky for you, neither does Tall, Dark, and Ugly,” he says. “All you have to do is keep him under wraps long enough for me to figure out a way to get rid of him. _Capische?_ ”

“Yeah, sure,” Quint says, staring off into what would be the middle distance if there _was_ any distance in the cramped space. “It’s not like I’m literally the worst at lying or anything.”

Proto Man laughs, and Quint peers up at him peevishly.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“That’s not gonna be a problem.” The red robot grins, starting to steer them towards the door. “Let me introduce you to Cutman and Gutsman...”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be honest. I have a lot less momentum going on this one than on my last fics. 2020 sure is a year, huh? But I decided to post it anyway, because it's most likely to get finished that way. Updates will be irregular for real this time, but I hope that in the future that note will be every bit as silly as it is reading the other two times I said that.


End file.
